


Every Time I Close My Eyes

by notcrypticbutcoy



Series: Canon Inserts [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 2x15 coda, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Malec, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 20:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11539641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcrypticbutcoy/pseuds/notcrypticbutcoy
Summary: "When I was tortured in Valentine's body, that agony rune made me relive my worst memory. And now I can't get it out of my head. Every time I close my eyes..."After Valentine is sent to Idris, Magnus and Alec return to the loft for some much needed time away from the action. Alec's words might not be a magical cure for Magnus' nightmares, but they have helped Magnus feel a little less alone.A (mostly) canon insert post-2x15.





	Every Time I Close My Eyes

As the final Shadowhunters stepped through the portal, Magnus kept his head bowed slightly, eyes fixated on the floor as Valentine’s words rang in his ears.

_At least I’ll be in Alicante, where the air doesn’t reek of Downworlders._

Everything about the dingy little prison ward Magnus stood in reminded him of things he’d really rather forget. The cell he’d been imprisoned in. The bed with the horribly hard mattress that he’d spent far too many hours sitting on. The chair he’d been dragged onto by his own boyfriend—the location of his torture and his near execution.

The wall Alec had slammed him against, eyes wild and hands poised to be used as weapons, when Magnus had begged him to believe that he wasn’t Valentine.

Alec had asked him, before they’d left the loft together. He’d curled a hand around Magnus’ shoulder, hazel eyes saturated with unending concern, and ducked his head.

“You don’t have to come,” he’d said. “If you don’t want to go back there, I get it. It’s okay. We can call another warlock.”

But he’d wanted to. He’d wanted to come. Partly for the closure, for the knowledge that Valentine would be sent through a portal to Alicante, where he’d never set foot in Magnus’ general vicinity. And partly to prove to himself that he could. To prove to himself that a single day hadn’t crippled him.

Now, he’s not so sure it was a good idea at all. The words of a blatantly racist genocidal maniac whom Magnus could scorch off the face of the planet in mere moments should not have thrown his mind into such chaos. They shouldn’t have scattered his thoughts and left him reeling, discomfort and upset and nausea settling in the pit of his stomach.

But they did, leaving the face of his stepfather flashing in their wake.

Fingers rested on his elbow, just light enough to feel through the material of his jacket. He glanced up, over, to see Alec watching him with his brows furrowed.

“Do you want to go?”

Magnus nodded slowly, but didn’t meet his gaze. “Yes. I want to go.”

He didn’t look back as they walked out in silence, and turned pointedly away when Alec slammed the door behind them, locking it with a rune before he slid his stele back into his belt. If nobody asked him to go back down there in the next century, Magnus thought it would be too soon.

“Are you going home?” Alec asked, coming to stand in front of him where he’d paused, lingering, waiting, without thought, for Alec.

“Unless my services are still needed here.”

“No.” Alec shook his head. His brows were still drawn together, skin creasing in the middle. “No, you should go home. Get some sleep.”

Magnus couldn’t help the muscles in his face twitching at that, because whatever he’d said this morning, and every other morning Alec had asked, he hadn’t slept, and he wasn’t fine. God knew he appreciated Alec listening to him, letting him unload everything he was buckling beneath the weight of, but Magnus knew it wasn’t a magical cure. It helped, someone listening, someone reassuring him, just the knowledge that he wasn’t alone, but it didn’t undo what had happened in that dank little cell.

“I can come with you, if you want,” Alec said, to Magnus’ silence.

Magnus’ gut reaction, his immediate instinct, was to decline. Decades of being torn down had resulted in centuries of erecting barriers made of stone and spiked with iron between himself and anything, anyone, with the power to ruin him.

But he felt the phantom sensation of Alec’s palm against his face, breath warm in the space between them as he told Magnus that _there is nothing ugly about you._ And he thought that perhaps Ragnor had been right, that day when he’d appeared in Magnus’ loft before Alec’s wedding. Perhaps he needed to fight for this love that tore down his walls, rather than shut it out by building them up, reinforcing them with distance and denial and white lies.

“Don’t you have work to do?” Magnus asked. “With Valentine’s departure—”

“It can wait,” Alec replied, easily, and Magnus felt his heart turn over. “If you want me to come, I’ll come. If you don’t, if you…need to be on your own, I understand that too.”

“I’d like you to come.”

Alec smiled, the spread slow, easing across his face and into his eyes, and he reached out to grasp Magnus’ hand. Magnus hadn’t realised how good it felt to let someone in. To trust someone he loved with his vulnerabilities, and to know that they were in safe hands.

“Okay,” Alec said, voice quiet as he squeezed Magnus’ hand gently. “Let’s go home.”

***

Alec didn’t let go of Magnus’ hand until they were inside the loft. Magnus could feel his boyfriend’s eyes on him as he crossed the floor, shedding layers and dropping them as he made his way towards the drinks cabinet, more out of habit than necessity.

“Drink?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder, the fingers of one hand curled around the neck of a whiskey bottle.

“How about a coffee?” Alec suggested, one eyebrow slightly quirked. “Or tea?”

Unbidden, Ragnor’s face flashed through Magnus’ mind, because it was exactly the sort of thing Ragnor would say. A gentle suggestion to point to the course of action that didn’t include copious quantities of alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Magnus turned around to face Alec, and let himself smile, just a little. “Tea would be nice.”

Alec curled a hand around his shoulder and gripped lightly on his way past, heading towards the kitchen. For a moment, Magnus stared after him, wondering where they were supposed to go, now. Now that he’d told Alec about his darkest moment. Now that he’d bared his soul and made himself vulnerable.

“Here,” Alec said, coming back into the room with two mugs, steam curling up off the tops and swirling through the air.

Magnus thanked him, and Alec sat down beside him on the sofa, leaving a space of several inches between them. Magnus wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or mournful. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Did he want to curl up with Alec, or did he merely want to exist in the same space, together but not _together_?

“Hey.” Alec’s voice made him look up from his tea. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Magnus let his lips curl up fondly at that, at Alec’s unending desire to fix things, to make everyone around him happy, to bend over backwards to please everyone he could—and even those he couldn’t. He shook his head minutely.

“Just this,” Magnus said, and shifted closer without thought to put himself in Alec’s space, to feel his body heat through the layers of their clothes. He let his head fall against Alec’s shoulder, and closed his eyes. “For now, just this.”

Alec’s arm slipped around his shoulders, sturdy and comforting, and Magnus felt lips press into his hair. “Okay.”

They stayed pressed together, drinking their tea and revelling in the shared silence, for what could have been an eternity. Alec didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. He was there. That was enough. That was all Magnus needed from him. He knew it wasn’t as easy as it often sounded, to be there for someone, but Alec was. And he appreciated it.

It wasn’t until Alec’s eyelids began to droop and the telltale sounds of his breaths beginning to deepen, rumbling somewhere deep in his chest, that Magnus considered that, perhaps, it was time to sleep.

Or, at least, make some attempt at it.

“Alexander,” he said, dragging his knuckles across Alec’s jaw. “Let’s go to bed.”

Alec’s eyes rolled beneath his lids, and he made a low noise of complaint that made Magnus laugh softly. He stood, and extended a hand to the half-asleep Shadowhunter on his sofa.

“Am I gonna wake up to you, this time?” Alec asked as he clasped Magnus’ hand and rose, eyes shockingly intense considering his state of clear exhaustion.

Swallowing, Magnus flicked his gaze over Alec’s shoulder, fixing on an invisible point in the distance. “I don’t know.”

“Magnus.” Alec’s hand cupped his cheek, heavy and clumsy with sleep, but familiar in its callouses and length, and plenty effective in stirring something warm in Magnus’ stomach. “You can wake me up. If you just want to…not be alone.”

“I think you’ve just proven that you’re tired enough to need a few hours of sleep by falling asleep on me.”

Alec shrugged, and his hand slipped to Magnus’ shoulder. “What else are stamina runes for?”

Magnus huffed out a laugh. “I don’t think that’s their intended purpose.”

Alec raised his eyebrows, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth, laughter shining in his eyes. “Neither is what I activated mine for the other day, but I don’t recall much complaining from you that time.”

“But that was fun,” Magnus said, unable to stop himself smiling right back in the face of such an infectious expression. “This isn’t.”

“No,” Alec agrees, smile falling to be replaced with something more serious, but no less caring. “But it might be less awful than sitting up alone for half the night and magicking on your make-up in the morning to convince me that you’re totally fine.”

“I hoped you wouldn’t notice that.”

Alec’s eyebrows shot up. “Magnus, the bathroom was far too tidy. There wasn’t even one brush on the floor.”

Magnus gaped at him for a moment in mock outrage, and then shoved his chest lightly, laughing. “You ass.”

“You told me I _snore_.”

“You do!” Magnus was still laughing. “You do!”

“I don’t believe you,” Alec said, eyes alight but voice low.

“I guess we’ll just have to go to bed and see,” Magnus replied.

Alec _definitely_ snored. Magnus could hear it, could feel it beneath his palms and against his chest, but it made him smile, as he tucked his face into the back of Alec’s neck and inhaled slowly, grounding himself. He couldn’t quite make his brain shut off enough to slip under the dark blanket sleep provided, but he’d get there.

And even if it did all go horribly wrong - even if he was woken by nightmares that made him scream silently into the darkness - he didn’t have to go through the aftermath alone. Alec hadn’t magically fixed what he’d done, all those centuries ago, and Magnus thought it was probably unlikely that he’d fixed the issue of his nightmares, but he had eased the feeling of being utterly, horribly alone in his grief and his fear.

He wasn’t alone. And Alec’s heartbeat beneath his fingers left him secure in the knowledge that, whatever the morning brought, he didn’t have to carry all the weight of the world on his shoulders. He had somebody to share the burden of leadership, of difficult decisions and second-guessing and impossible situations, with. He had arms to fall into at the end of a long day, that could be balm to his aching soul with a simple _I’m here, and I’ve got you_.

And so, lips a mere hairsbreadth from Alec’s skin, Magnus closed his eyes.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for Alec's use of the stamina rune here is taken loosely from [here](http://abloodneed.tumblr.com/post/162618768734/okay-so-what-do-you-think-about-non-sexual%20).
> 
> You can [come follow me on Tumblr](http://notcrypticbutcoy.tumblr.com) where I take prompts and take far too long to get back to people.


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